Ah the weirdness of French grammar - “maman est morte” is actually past tense! The verb ‘to die’ takes the verb ‘to be’ to conjugate this tense, the ‘passé compose’. So it reads like the present…but is the past!
I thought about this a little more and decided to add a distinctly American opening passage from "Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurtry. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986.
"When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake - not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug of war with it, and its rattling days were over. The sow had it by the neck and the shoat had it by the tail."
Rather catchy, isn't it?
And as one reads one, there is a sense of metaphor. For the protagonists in the novel? The American West in the time after the Civil War? Maybe more?
It really is truly American – it has that sense of immediacy and yet also casualness. Reminds me a little of The Ball Jar actually, and also of Faulkner
My personal favourites: the opening to Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
And
Camus’ L’étranger : “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas”.
(Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know).
Among many many others…
The Camus is brilliant, and even “stranger” in the present tense in French.
I also considered including an opening from another French novel ("Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure..").
Ah the weirdness of French grammar - “maman est morte” is actually past tense! The verb ‘to die’ takes the verb ‘to be’ to conjugate this tense, the ‘passé compose’. So it reads like the present…but is the past!
Some great ones Laura, hard to disagree there!
I thought about this a little more and decided to add a distinctly American opening passage from "Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurtry. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986.
"When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake - not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug of war with it, and its rattling days were over. The sow had it by the neck and the shoat had it by the tail."
Rather catchy, isn't it?
And as one reads one, there is a sense of metaphor. For the protagonists in the novel? The American West in the time after the Civil War? Maybe more?
Beautiful, never heard of that one.
It really is truly American – it has that sense of immediacy and yet also casualness. Reminds me a little of The Ball Jar actually, and also of Faulkner